Week 21

It's all coming together. There are 11 poems now and this weekend I've redrafted the meteorite poem and tried out a found pantoum based on this lovely quilt. I'm also working on the Hermes poem (again!) and hope to write one about buckles - even though the butterflies lost out to the Death's Head Hawkmoth in the end.

We've also got the trading words activity finished and the visitor's poemlet activity is almost ready for the blog.

We're looking at doing one more workshop for the museum - this will be a family workshop, encouraging people to write nonsense poems inspired by the exhibits and based on my Dinosaur Egg poem, hopefully alongside a film of me performing the poem - I'll be talking to Jason Wingard next week about the filming.

The plan is to get all the poems written by the time I see Dominic next on the 21st June.

Then what we have to figure out is how to connect all those poems together into a narrative that can form the basis of a show. Dominic's determined there will be jokes, which will be interesting. I'm not a natural comic - except by accident! I'm really hoping Dominic has some bright ideas, or at least some smart questions - because right now I'm struggling to imagine it.

But then, that's the nature of the creative process. You start with something you can't imagine. You think and you talk and you dream and you put some words on paper and you mess with them and you think and talk and dream some more and eventually something exists, not in the imagination, but in reality. It still scares me. Every single time.

The best thing I did when I planned this project is to bring together some really good people to work with. Dominic's been incredibly supportive and not afraid to push me to do better and to ask difficult questions. Cat and Debbie have been there to talk to every week and to help shape the workshops into something that works for the museum. The curators have shown me things and answered my questions. Jennie showed me the Dinosaur egg and her enthusiasm helped lead to the poem, which was really the one that got me on the right track. And soon I'll be meeting with Tania to discuss how we extend the show into a fuller educational experience.

We're half way through the 10 month project now - and it feels like we're where we should be. There are plenty of challenges ahead, but it's very exciting and I think we're going to end up with something pretty good.

Week 11

Another great day at the museum!

Debbie and I trialled the trading activity. In a nutshell the children win cards with words or objects as a reward for answering questions and then try to form sentences from the words - trading cards with each other or using money to buy more useful words. We talk a lot about value - in terms of the worth of things changing depending on how much someone wants things, and how many people want things, and how the value of a sentence depends on whether you think the best is the funniest or the weirdest or the truest. Or just the one you mates make up.

Because the task was so open-ended the children went about it in different ways. We had haggling and bidding wars, we had gentle persuasion. We had one child who bought my stock of cards to sell on at a profit. We had children reneging on deals and hoarding to stop other children getting the good words. I think it helped them think a lot about how money works and hopefully what's fair and isn't fair. (Can you stop children thinking about what's fair and isn't fair?!)

At some point I'm going to write a Hermes poem that signposts some of the interesting issues around trading and also to bring it back to thinking about the values that are attached to words.

But for now, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Also, this article about Benin came up in the Guardian, so I'm popping it here for later.

Week 9

Things are starting to step up a notch. Debbie and I worked on the card game based around the living cultures and money galleries, which we're going to be trying out on a group of guinea kids in a couple of weeks.

And on Monday Dominic and I are going to be working on the draft of my Hermes verse ready to try something out on a local school the week after.

I also looked round the museum to contemplate what the future element of my set of poems might be. Mostly I was looking at the snowy sky through the glass roof and wondering if we needed some kind of Great Glass Elevator.

There's a shocking exhibit in the vivarium with lots of chopped down trees and no animals at all. That's one future. There's also on the other end of the same floor an aquaponics system - a closed system where bacteria digest fish poo into food for mint. It's all very peaceful and harmonious. That's a vision of the future too.

And in the money gallery there's an amazing machine that allows you to feel your way round virtual objects. Partly it's for visually impaired people - but it's also a different way of having other people experience objects, and a way of exploring objects theoretically from the other side of the world. It's a very strange experience, poking your way round a rather vicious looking pig skull and being able to feel how deep the holes are and which go right through and which don't. (There were all sorts of lovely vases but naturally I'd rather poke round a pig skull!) So a world in which we experience things differently and in which we are differently connected. That's a future too.

But the future is unscripted. It is territory to which the map is not yet drawn. It is a story which young people will write for themselves. I'd like to help them understand that. Without scaring the bejeezus out of them, or apologising too abjectly for the fact that we're handing a difficult present to them.

But on a lighter note there's a parcel waiting in the post office for me. I'm hoping it's rubber snakes - all the way from Hong Kong. Can snakes have a carbon footprint if they don't have feet?

Week 5

It's been quite a week. Dominic Berry came to see me at the museum on Friday. Dominic's a talented and experienced writer of poetry for children and I've asked him to mentor me on this project. You should check out his webpage. Earlier in the week we'd both been to see http://louisethepoet.co.uk/'s show The Sleepover at Z Arts. It was great. Lots of chewy rhymes, physical theatre and humour. It really got me thinking.

Especially I started to think about making Hermes the star of the show. I started off thinking of making a big Hermes doll complete with gold sandals, winged helmet, staff and before I knew what was happening I was online shopping for gold sandals for me. I think I'm going to be Hermes. (Dominic's quite excited by the whole gender switching thing as well as the vegan carrot cake in the cafe!). 

Dominic's encouraged me to stick to four key poems within the Hermes narrative. I was all set to write twelve, and I still might, but only 4 will be central to the show. The others can be imported if required. We thought they should represent a journey in time. I was already keen on writing about the meteoroite (Oooh, yes, I bought a meteorite from ebay. It's only as large as my thumb nail but I keep touching it and thinking "That's come from outer space!" and "That might be older than the earth!") and the tree frog. The tree frog's interesting because not only is it that strange transition between land and see (and Hermes loves those boundaries) but because there's another story, about how we've impacted the world around us without even thinking about it (Palm oil, folks!). 

We talked about also having a human story - just yet I'm not sure what that is, and also a story of a future. I checked in my notebook and noticed that according to Aesop (who argues with Aesop!) Hermes was the ruler of the gate of prophetic dreams which fits beautifully.

We also went down to the dinosaurs to have a look round. Dominic's working on a work for children around Dinosaurs. I thought he should have a land, air and water dinosaur, but it turns out the air and water reptiles aren't actually dinosaurs. Which is a shame because they're cool. Actually it was mostly nautilus that charmed me. Guess I'm going to have to write about nautilus myself!

So we started to think about my poems in terms of the air (meteorite), water (frog) and land (human migration). I think the fourth might be fire. Have we a fiery future. I was talking to one of my pupils about the sun cooling into a red giant and the probability that the earth would get swallowed up. He told me that when his primary school teacher told his class about it, one little girl cried inconsolably. I don't want to have that effect on children. Personally I'm not all that bothered about what happens in 7 or 8 billion years. I guess Hermes might be though....

Week 3

First things first. Cardamom buns! The museum cafe is back open and serving cardamom buns. These are new to me - they're made of a bread dough, the colour of brown sugar, flavoured with cardomom and I suspect cinnamon and served warm and they're absolutely delicious.

While I ate my bun and waited for Debbie and Cat I sketched this out. My drawing skills aren't all that great - but I wanted a visual way of expressing something I'd been sensing more and more - that our feelings about migration and about the interaction within the human world and between the human and natural world are strongly linked to how we view the connectedness of the world. 

While we were discussing this and the idea that in early human societies the need to trade and exchange must have formed much of the basis for migration - and also that none of us have what we need. Solely we can achieve very little - the greater our ambition, the greater our need to co-operate. Cat wondered if we could mimic that in a word game where children had to trade cards to get the words they would need to create sentences. It reminded me a bit of 'Fish', a game we used to play as children, or 'Old Maid' without the maid (and obviously I like positive messages about single middle-aged women these days!). 

Sitting there eating my bun (I told you the bun was important) and drinking coffee I thought about how even our breakfast involves the contribution of a whole parade of souls - including the cow. There's a poem there!

Debbie also handed over a special camera for me to try. It's a Polaroid camera except it prints out stickers. We talked about how we might use this in a workshop based around the questions I used last week to write the poemlets. We also talked about using the ipods for the same job - so I get to test out an ipod (I'm an android user) and practice using Frame Artist. 

Then I went back up to the money gallery - a gallery I hadn't previously realised existed. I came to it through the live reptiles and frogs, which has always been the end point of my visits. I went back to have another look at this. 

This is a contract on papyrus from Egypt in the 1st century BC. It's an artist's contract committing to perform at a number of festivals in return for a set fee. I've got a drawer full of these - though none of them on papyrus. 

I also spotted him. He's Hermes, the God of traders and travellers. I thought I might write a poem about him too. 

When I started this project faced with the two themes of Water and Migration I was tempted to spend most time on water because the subject of Migration is so fraught. But it occurs to me that if it's place in it's historical, global and natural context it becomes less so. I spoke to Tania from Sustain Education about this and she agrees that maybe school's would be helped by having a way into those discussions. It's very topical. And there is, I think, a moral imperative. They're tricky things, both in poetry and in education, so it needs to be handled carefully. 

I went back through to see the tree frogs. I thought about the evolution of fish, amphibia and reptiles and about how that movement from sea to land is a kind of migration. Nearly every textbook talks about 'conquering' the land. That's weird when you think of it. I started to think about the language that was used - invasion, colonisation, exploration - for more or less the same thing. Could I use these in the card game. Dare I give these words scores - using the highest for the most or the least manipulative? 

Back through Nature's Library, I started to notice things (particularly plants and invertebrates) named after other things. This is a kind of migration of ideas, which I suppose is what a metaphor is. Could a writing exercise be based on naming? Here are some of them - I love that there's a chocolate chip starfish!

   

 

Week 2

This week I met Debbie the Primary Co-ordinator in the Education Department at Manchester Museum and had a chat about the project. Debbie's going to be working with me for the next few weeks. One of the things we talked about was how our perceptions of things shifted depending on what we brought to the experience. In this way a museum was like a work of art. Debbie also wondered if we could use music to influence a child's experience of a museum.

The first job was to go round the 12 key objects I chose last week and answer my own questions, which you might remember from last week were;

1. What do we say about the object?
2. What does the object say about itself?
3. What does it really mean?

This was fun! I didn't think too much about it. I just wrote down the first things that occurred to me. I have tweeted four of them which were short enough - this might be a nice way for visitors and school children to engage.

Here they are:

Maharajah: walked 200 miles from Edinburgh to Belle Vue zoo in 1872

Look at my huge feet, how easily they carry my weight.
It was a long way. It has been a long time.

Spice Racks: India 1865, wood

I have treasures. I have secrets.
Spin me fast enough and my pods pop off, fizz like stars.

Bark Cloth: made of beaten Masi stems, stencilled, Fiji, before 1942

Roll me out. I will hold your nights and your days, your lives and your children.
I will whisper to you in my patterns, sing the wind in the Masi.

Chinese Dish, Porcelain and enamel, decorated with bats and long life symbols, for export

Sprinkle me with leaves, lay me with fruit.
I am yellow like the sun. I came across the miles. I was always here.

Helmet: metal, Iran, donated 1946 

I was Persia, the Orient, Asia Minor.
I was war, death, dignity, defence.

Head-dress: Manchu, China, Kingfisher feather, bamboo, silk, more than 60 years old. 

I know your greatness. I will make you great in the eyes of the world.
I am pain - the kingfisher, the oyster, the silkworm, the hands that cut. Did you think it could be otherwise?

Iron Core of Meteorite:  Campo del Cielo (Field of Heaven) Argentina, 16th Century. 

I am alien. I am earth.
We are all spacedust.

Jaw: Hammerhead Shark

It was only ever hunger, life.
When there were nerves, this mouth knew the whole world which spewed into it.

Cabinet of Tiny Fossils: 19th Century Collection

I am the deep history of the earth. Collected, ordered, classified.
The earth resists this project. It flirts with chaos, comes back to us giggling with surprises.

Plaster Cast of Dog buried in Ash: Vesuvious, Italy

I am every dog, scratching his back. I didn't see it coming.
I might have followed you, begged for scraps, licked your face. I have smelly breath.

Green Tree Python: Modified muscles, prehensile tail, climbs trees, sleeps during the day, head tucked in the middle of its coils, bites, Australian rain forest. 

This is my tree. I have not moved all week.
I am more threatened than threatening. Let me sleep.

Fragments of Pottery: Archaeological interpretation and analysis. 

Each one of us was part of something, a jar, a dish, a cup.
Our mismatched fragments become a new whole.

Frog and duck weights: Mesopotamia, 2-3rd Millenia BC

The balance, the baking, the baggies. I am your history too.
How might it be not to apportion - mass, time, value, love?



I realised I had not given much thought to the themes of water and migration during this. So I've picked two ideas to think about this week - trade and poisoned and polluted water.

Week 1

Cat and I met for a chat at the museum - we both got quite excited about the possibilities. One of Cat's suggestions was to look for key objects so I took my tablet round the museum and took 12 photos. I didn't think too much about it. I just took things that made me react in some way or another.

After my journey round the museum I felt quite overwhelmed and went for a walk. I thought about whether children could take ipods round and take pictures and then organise their pictures into groups, like their own personal galleries. 2 groups of 6, 3 groups of 4, 4 groups of 3 (wasn't it lucky I chose the number 12!). What would connect the items in their groups? Could you have 6 pairs of opposites.

Then I started thinking about something Cat had said about the need to keep looking again at objects that had become familiar in order to see something more in them - and about how we wanted to encourage children to do that in a limited amount of time.

I came up with 3 questions:

1. What do we say about the object?
2. What does the object say about itself?
3. What does it really mean?

I wasn't really sure if those questions would get us anywhere but it felt like a good start!

Here are those images. More about them next week. 

Buckles and Butterflies is an Arts Council funded project based at Manchester Museum. I will be exploring the themes of Water and Migration and writing poetry for children.